New film portrays child with Tourette syndrome

From the USA Today review:

Elle Fanning (pictured) is wondrous in Phoebe in Wonderland.

But the movie is an uneven, unfocused amalgamation of ideas and moods that is at times deeply moving nonetheless.

It emerges partly a realistic character study of a troubled child, partly a treatise about the tyranny of conformity over imagination and partly a hallucinatory fantasy. Given all it sets out to do, it's not surprising it doesn't always succeed. But when it does, it can be thought-provoking and emotionally wrenching.

Phoebe is a lovely but disturbed 9-year-old. Fanning portrays her with luminous grace, playfulness and a convincing sense of obsession.

Felicity Huffman, as Phoebe's academic mother, is ambivalent about devoting time to child-rearing. She expresses this honestly to her rather clueless husband, a writer played by Bill Pullman. Neither knows quite what to make of Phoebe's spiraling mental problems.

While her teachers are depicted as unimaginative caricatures fixated on ridiculous rules, Phoebe, who's diagnosed with Tourette syndrome, is portrayed as a magical creature. For a movie that paints with an expansive color palette of emotions, these characterizations seem oddly black and white.

And Phoebe's escapist fantasy life is not very inventive. Unlike Pan's Labyrinth, which fashioned a world unlike anything we'd seen, Phoebe's flights of fancy are filled with recognizable characters from Alice in Wonderland.

Phoebe's drama teacher, Miss Dodger, played sphinx-like by Patricia Clarkson, is the only adult who sees the girl's creative potential. Perhaps this is because she knows what it's like to be out of the ordinary. Presented alternately as a comforting presence and a threatening figure, Miss Dodger encapsulates writer/director Daniel Barnz's film: It veers between presenting the imagination as a splendidly inviting place and a terrifying prison.

One of the most shattering but powerful scenes is when Phoebe breaks down in abject terror and confusion over the compulsions that increasingly control her existence. Not long afterward, Phoebe goes to school and speaks to her class about having Tourette syndrome.

It's a scene that doesn't quite fit with the tone of the rest of the film. It's as if Barnz can't decide whether he wants to make a heartwarming, redemptive movie (it is jointly produced by Lifetime Pictures) or a darker, more probing examination of a distraught child.

At a climactic moment, Phoebe rallies her classmates, and they pull off a production of Alice in Wonderland with elaborate musical numbers and choreography they had never practiced. It rings false, as if Phoebe is channeling Andy Hardy.

Moments like these undercut the revelatory and achingly honest tone and throw a pall over the entire story, making the audience feel as if they've plunged through a foggy looking glass.